(no longer) The Northernmost Jew

My dog needs help geting out the door.

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Occasionally in business it is necessary for a woman executive to pay entertainment or other bills for men clients or to take their share of checks when lunching with men business associates. In all cases (for the sake of the man) a woman tries to avoid a public display of her financial arrangements. Onlookers cannot know the circumstances, and men are easily embarrassed by a career woman’s usurpation of their traditional role. Even if she is lunching a junior executive, it is courteous to allow him the dignity of seeming to pay the bill.
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- Amy Vanderbilt’s Complete Book of Etiquette, 1952

It is currently -5 F / -21 C. My heater broke. I'm about to spend my third night without heat. Fortunately I have lots of blankets. Years ago when I was living in Phoenix, my air conditioning broke in 117 F / 47 C. I guess this is the worlds way of balancing everything out (actually the Phoenix heat was worse).

I haven't seen the cartoons that the Muslims object to, but I'd hate to think how bad they must be if people feel it is worth it to have protests in which people die. I'd be sympathetic, except that many of the countries where the protests are taking place regularly have anti-Jewish cartoons in the newspapers.

(printed in today's Anchorage Daily News)

It is 5 am and I can not sleep because it is so windy! The wind is LOUD!!! So I had to check the weather. Temperature: 37 F / 3 C. Wow - above freezing!!! Windchill 23 F / -5 C. That doesn't sound like that big a difference, considering how loud the wind is. Wind: 38 mph / 61 km/h from the SE. Wind Gust: 45 mph / 72 km/h . What is the difference between the wind speed and the wind gust speed? We are currently under a US severe weather warning: "A High Wind Warning remains in effect until 6 PM AST this afternoon. South to southeast winds 25 to 40 mph with gusts to 60 mph will continue through the day today. A High Wind Warning means hazardous high winds are expected. Take precautions to protect life and prevent property damage." I wonder if the planes will fly today. I wonder how well this house was built. I wonder if these winds can pick up or slam around a 23 pound schnauzer. I guess I will go back to bed to enjoy the nice cozy feeling of snuggling under some blankets nice and warm while I hear the wind outside.

Happy Tu B'shvat. In honor of the day I drank some pomegranate-mango juice and ate chocolate with almonds. Is that festive enough?

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It is 22 F / -6 C here today. (Kaynahora) I love it! I took Max on a long walk to enjoy the heat wave. And no wind!!! They had all sorts of trouble with the heat in Anchorage with ice breaking up and melting, making conditions hazardous and they closed the schools there for a day.
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Since this is a dry town, would I offend people if I wore a t-shirt with the words to “Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall”? (The shirt only has one verse. What they really ought to do is put a verse on the front and say “continued on the back” while the back has a verse followed by “continued on the front”.)
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I have been getting a lot of catalogues. I guess since I ordered some things on line they sold my address to some people and I have been getting a bunch. It is amazing what is out there.
*Here is something that hooks up to the TV set so a group can play poker. Every player has a hand-held doohickey that shows them their cards. On the TV screen you can see what cards are on the table. It is $69.99 + S&H. (A deck of cards is $2 at Wal-Mart.)
*Now here is something useful. It is a muffin pan. The cups for the muffins are very shallow. This way you can make muffins that are almost all top since that is the best part.
*Super-Scrabble! The board is 21x21 instead of 15x15 and has 200 tiles instead of 100. Actually, I think I will order a set.
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Dogs are great, aren’t they? You can act as silly with them as you want, and they’ll just look at you like you are the greatest. I think Max needs a CPAP.
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This school district has membership in something called “United Streaming”. It is like an online video library or teachers. You type in a word or phrase and it sees what videos it finds. You can download them to show to your classes. There are a LOT to choose from. I’ve found some great ones for my science classes while we did astronomy. (BTW, if you sign up, tell them I want commission!)
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The mail to and from Deering is AWFUL!!! I upgraded my Netflix subscription to five movies at a time because the movies you have out include the ones in the mail either way. At the moment I have one DVD on me. The other 4 they say I have are all movies I mailed back between 6 days and 3 weeks ago that they still have not received. (I just reported one lost in transit after a month.) The Department of Education in Juneau mailed me some time-critical paperwork a 8 days ago and I have not yet received it. A few weeks ago I paid $15 to mail something two-day express mail to my daughter in Portland (There is no overnight mail from here) and it took a week.
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How many worker-hours did Microsoft put into making that little animated paperclip dance?
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So long for now. Gut Vacht.

The major Iranian newspaper is getting back at the Danish newspapers by having a contest to see who can come up with the most offensive cartoon on the Shoah. One example they had had Hitler and Anne Frank in bed together, obviously just having had sex, while Hitler smokes a cigarette and says "Write this in your diary, Anne". I don't want to put a copy here because it is offensive, but if you want to see it you can go to an article about offensive cartoons which shows it at http://www.hyscience.com/archives/2006/02/dutch_islamists.php because they wish to give the same publicity to this offensive cartoon as the Moslems are giving to the ones they find offensive.

A lot of villages (including this one) only get one channel, unless you have satellite. It is ARCS, which stands for Alaska Rural Communication Service. What they show varies from one night to the next; one night they show the prime time shows from NBC, another night the primetime shows from FOX, etc. Well, last Sunday THEY DID NOT SHOW THE SUPERBOWL!!!!!! Apparently ABC or whoever had the rights would not let them show it. (In case you're wondering, my past Superbowl experience comes from watching the tapes made my a friend of mine, Scott R. in Portland, a bit after the date. He tapes the Superbowl, cuts out all the annoying football, and we watch the commercials.)

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If you are one of the maases who just can not get enough photographs of Deering, you can go to my brother and sister-in-law's website where they have pictures from their vacation here.
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/blairmarc/sets/72057594055331231/